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7-Design Week Recap

Monday

The theme of day 1 was how to get from a vague idea to something worth exploring. Mind mapping and domain mapping both seem like great ways to get started on a projects.

Tuesday

The “good design vs bad design” presentations brought up some interesting conversations about what constitutes “good” or “bad”. Is a design good just because people are used to it? Is another design bad because those same people can’t adapt to it? How about a design that’s intentionally bad? If it achieves its purpose, is it still bad? And if it’s intentionally bad, is it design or art? etc etc etc

The rest of the class was about research. We talked about how to gather data, how to find primary and secondary sources, and interview strategies.

Wednesday

Idea generation is interesting to me, as I usually think of “coming up with an idea” as a spontaneous, maybe even passive act – “It just came to me”. But, as a designer, it’s important to build a process around this. And even if ideas are spontaneous, you can put into practice this process to create a space for ideas to be born.

Thursday

A day dedicated to storyboarding and building out a concept into something clearly executable. As a class we came up with a story and built out a storyboard. I have a bit of trouble trying to connect storyboarding to the design process.

Friday

Each student presented a past project and the process involved. It was amazing to see how the same process was used in such different fields to accomplish such different goals. For my personal project, I revisited a fundraising/marketing campaign I ran at an old job – a project I didn’t think of as “design” until I started fitting it into the design process.